Bath time

These days Uncle Jack only comes out of his room once a week, for a bath. The rest of the time he sits in his chair in front of the television, wailing. You can hear him all over the house. It sounds very peculiar, as if we are keeping a tethered discontented beast somewhere in the house. Muffled by intervening doors, the regularity and strangulated tone of his wails sometimes reminds us of the strident bleating of a sheep. Sometimes it does my head in. I go in and say, ‘What’s the matter? What are you making all this noise for?’ And he’ll look up at me with a belligerent light in his eye and say, ‘I’m bored.’

I can’t say I blame him, actually. He sits there day after day with nothing to occupy his mind, apart from the bizarre delusions which visit it now and again, and daytime television, with no way of distinguishing between the two. You’d think he’d look forward to his weekly visit to the bathroom, if only for a change of scenery. But Uncle Jack refuses to get out of his chair without good reason, and a weekly bath, in his book, is certainly not one of those. On bath day we have to go into his room in force and cajole and plead with him. Sometimes he eventually gives way, sometimes we fail. Whichever the result, emotions always runs high and we have to watch out for his stick.

Climbing in and out of the bath has become such a perilous operation for Uncle Jack that we got him a bath hoist for his birthday. This consists of a white plastic seat similar to those sold as garden furniture, except it has vertical slots to let the water drain through.